Usounds writers Scott Roots and SnuggleBot (Jared Fiechtner) head to George, Washington for the 6th annual Sasquatch Music Festival. They wanted to keep a journal to document the weekend…what they end up with is more important than all of the world’s newborn infants.

DAY 1, SATURDAY

9:30 am, SR: Sasquatch 07. It begins. Our anxiousness is palpable. Snuggle Bot is running slow on sleep, but the needle points to F as far as his excitement is concerned. Sasquatch is jamming a car with people and stuff and driving two or three hours to a big field to drink with ten thousand people that all could be your new friends, more or less. Sasquatch is sitting, standing, and not much in between. Sasquatch is weed brownies. For me, last year’s ‘Quatch was tarnished by a bad back that translated into a bad attitude. That’s why now, as I sit left nut in Holly’s ‘92 Cavalier, I am so ready to turn this year’s festival on its head. Jared asks, “Are those cows tiny or are they just far away? They look like little dogs.” As the urban jungle of Seattle gives way to the rolling hills and “little cows” of rural Washington, I let the pre ‘Quatch energy run over me. Picture it like I’m walking through a car wash and it’s set to “pre-‘Quatch with wax”.

What’s up with opening bands? I mean seriously: where do they find these people? Here I am, Thursday night, minding my own business, hanging out and waiting for Deerhoof to play. I had already endured the opener’s thirty minutes when these two girls who might be in high school and this guy who might be (and is) in the band Phantom Planet come out onto the stage. And the way they’re angular and attractive and solemn, well it’s evident that something strange is brewin’. I knew it – the crowd knew – we all knew it like animals know it when a forest is gonna burn down; we knew it but we really didn’t know what it meant. There was a VIP space on the balcony at Neumo’s this night, and there were people eating sushi, and you couldn’t go into this area unless you knew something. Something was up, oh yeah. And then I heard the people behind me mention it and the pieces fell together and it all made perfect sense: Black Black was from LA!

As USOUNDS’ archivist it is my job to find things from our back issues and relay them to you. Well, our entire 1974 archive was destroyed in a fire of suspicious origin at our storage facility outside Paris, but I did come up with a sentence from a review of the very show this video is from. So while I can’t share the review, with the magic of youtube, I can show you a video, plus the sentence. Enjoy:

…at the exact moment it kicked in, Lou launched into “Sweet Jane” and it was as if I was transported beyond time and space, to a place where the underground sounds battle with hammers like the Norse Gods of old.

Upon entering the Seattle venue Neumos, I really thought it would be the Thermals night. With all the obscenely positive press The body, the blood, the machine has been receiving, (even from yours truly) I figured the kids would be primed to just eat it up. As it turns out however, it wasn’t so. Although for this, the Thermals can’t be blamed.

Hutch Harris was rocking and singing about the lord smiting the innocent to the point of looking ghoulish, and the rest of the band was supremely tight. They even played as a four piece just to add that little bit of extra rock. (Although I’m not sure how much more rock unison power chords add.) But all the same, it was nice, the effort was there.Continue reading “Cursive/Thermals Live in Seattle”